


Noyade

by ashamedbliss



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Always-a-girl!Merlin, Angst, Child Loss, F/M, Family Loss, Female Merlin (Merlin), Genderbending, Girl!Merlin, Grief/Mourning, Loss, Pregnancy, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 13:33:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20725022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashamedbliss/pseuds/ashamedbliss
Summary: “It’s kicking,” Merlin says, holding her stomach. “It knows you’re there.” Awe rolls off her in waves. You wonder how you ended up with someone so struck by the world, so infatuated with life.You don’t deserve her.Merlin turns to you and smiles, beams even, and you fall just a little bit more in love.





	Noyade

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed the tags before reading on.
> 
> Well, AO3, it's been a while, hasn't it? I wrote this piece for a university competition back in 2015 under different character names, and just found it going back through my files now. I'm hoping to slowly get back into writing, revisiting some of my older fics over the next few months, and writing some new ones in a new fandom (probably RDR 2 and maybe Fallout 4 if I find the courage).
> 
> Any feedback welcome. Thanks for reading.

The sound of a fountain pen scratching against paper fills the room. She’s journaling at _this _hour, you think sleepily as you blink into consciousness. You roll in the bed, the bed it all started in, and you turn towards her.

Wife. Husband and wife, four years now, another five before that. She blinks at you in the half light, wide blue eyes that can’t hide a thing and curling black hair that she’s never tried to tame, thank God. The strap of her nightgown has slipped down her shoulder just so, her pale skin as delicate as the page she writes on.

“Inspired?” you ask, your voice thick with sleep, or anticipation, perhaps both.

She nods, lips pursed in that odd sort of smirk you love. Merlin flexes her fingers, the light reflecting off her gold wedding band. “It woke me up.”

You reach a hand out to where the journal rests on her stomach, your son or daughter growing beneath the violet nightgown and your wife’s skin. Merlin decided she didn’t want to know the sex; she’d love them just the same either way.

Secretly, you long for a girl. But you’ve never told her.

“It’s kicking,” she says, “it knows you’re there.” Awe rolls off her in waves. You wonder how you ended up with someone so struck by the world, so infatuated with life.

You don’t deserve her.

Merlin turns to you and smiles, beams even, and you fall just a little bit more in love.

*

You brush your teeth over the sink, staring down your suited reflection, the combed blond hair, the tired blue eyes. You shouldn’t look so fatigued, the baby isn’t even here yet, but you’ve been working hard, taking on extra projects for bonuses, for your family to grow and be happy.

Merlin pouts when she sees you out of the door every day, and every day you hope against hope that the baby won’t arrive while you’re caught in a traffic jam, or in your father’s office. God, if it comes when you’re in your father’s office, you’d have to put up with him reminiscing about your own birth and… you’d rather not. Your mother remains a sore subject, twenty seven years later.

Then you return home to Merlin standing at the door once more, one hand towards you, the other on her stomach. A matter of days, now.

You blink at your reflection. You spit. Rinse and repeat.

*

It happens on a Sunday evening.

You’d cooked dinner, as always, a chore that isn’t really a chore because you love producing things for your wife. It satisfies something ancient in you, from a time where man gave woman everything she needed. You were sat on the sofa, your wife in your arms, when she cried out.

“Merlin?” you ask, and suddenly you’re not ready. Nine months, nine years, and you’re still not ready. “Are you alright?”

“Christ, Arthur…” she gasps, clutching at her stomach, and then everything goes so fast.

You don’t remember the phone call, but you remember how sterile the ambulance felt, the blue lights bouncing off the quiet suburban streets. You remember the way Merlin groaned in pain, a pain you will never comprehend, and how she’d held your hand so tightly that you swore your bones would break.

But you didn’t mind.

The doctors and nurses ushered Merlin into the maternity ward, into a special room of her own, and you’re not allowed in. Your palms began to sweat, but you breathe. You wait outside now on a cold plastic chair, the chill beginning to creep through your veins, threatening to break you from outside in. You must be strong, even when you hear your wife’s screams through the door, the shouted encouragement of the doctors.

It all stops suddenly. There should be crying, happy sobs of relief, congratulations.

Nothing.

You swallow thickly, trying to hold the Styrofoam cup of coffee still in your shaking hands, but it falls to the floor without ceremony. The ticking of the clock on the wall becomes your arch nemesis and your sole companion.

Finally, finally, a doctor emerges like a soldier from battle, the lone survivor. You stand as she approaches, tiny, broken.

“Mister Pendragon?”

You nod. You don’t trust your voice.

“I’m…” the doctor starts, before she sighs, eyes downcast. Your wife’s blood is all down her scrubs, and this woman looks exhausted. Perhaps not as much as Merlin is, though. “I’m so sorry. She didn’t make it.”

A girl.

You’re father to a baby girl.

Emotions seize in your chest and you look upwards to the ceiling, before looking down at the doctor again, a deer caught in the headlights. “I wish to be alone,” you manage, because your father brought you up to be a gentleman, and she slips away.

You walk into the room, one heavy foot at a time, and you shut the door behind you.

“She’s beautiful.”

_You’re beautiful_, you think but you don’t say. Merlin’s hair, so unruly, is plastered against her forehead, the curve where her belly would be significantly emptier, covered by blankets. She holds a tiny bundle in her arms, the faintest tuft of dark hair on its head.

The room is so silent.

“They don’t know why,” Merlin says softly, quietly as if the baby is sleeping against her chest. “Everything was fine at the last scan. They said it might be complications in birth.” She bites her lip, and normally you would scold her for it, but not now, maybe never again.

“We,” you start, and you feel like you haven’t spoken for a thousand years. “We can name her, if you want. Dress her, take photos with her.”

Merlin looks at you with those blue eyes you love, but you can’t read them now. “Okay,” she says softly, before she presses a kiss to the baby’s head.

“I’d hoped for a girl,” you say under your breath, but the weight in your chest doesn’t lessen now your secret is revealed.

Merlin looks up at you as if she’s the sun seeing the moon for the first time. “Me too,” she says, and you can feel yourself fraying. You ease into the chair at her bedside, and wordlessly, Merlin passes you the baby.

She looks so peaceful in her blankets that she could just be sleeping, but you know she’s not breathing, she’s not dreaming behind those little eyelids, her face is too purple for that. You hold her tiny fingers, still warm but growing cold, pretending she’s grasping onto your thumb. Your whole being aches.

“I thought of a name for her,” Merlin says, and you look at her, wondering when she became so much stronger than you.

“Yeah?” you manage, holding your daughter closer to your chest. You’d thought of so many names, but none of them fit this tiny dark-haired girl in your arms. Nothing is enough.

“I want to call her Eve.”

You make a noise that sounds like a hiccup, your chest tightening. You don’t know what’s happening until you remember, you recognise. Merlin is scared, wondering what she did wrong.

She’s never seen you cry before.

“Eve means life,” you say; you laugh, even, choking on it.

Here marks your downfall.

*

You buried Eve three days ago.

It was a quiet ceremony. You, Merlin and the vicar. You’d put little Eve in a beautiful pink dress and taken photos of her; she looked as if she was sleeping. Merlin stood at your side, clad in black just like you, clutching your arm.

The vicar didn’t address her once. Perhaps it was because she couldn’t stop crying.

You haven’t shown any emotion since the first time you held Eve in that hospital room. You’ve shut down on everything, building walls and submerging yourself in work to avoid feeling. Merlin lingers at home, no longer waiting at the door to greet you, no longer getting out of bed to see you off.

You’re starting to wonder if you’re allowing one another to disappear.

Your track record at work is at an all-time high. You’re completing projects faster than the others in your office, often working so late that the sun rises before you finish. You can’t remember the last time you ate, but you can recall the list of contractors you need to contact in perfect alphabetical order.

“Merlin.”

Your wife looks up from where she’s journaling on the sofa. You’ve realised that, for the first time in weeks, now, Merlin is writing again. “Yes?” she asks quietly. She’s so quiet nowadays, and you can’t work out why. Perhaps she’s scared of startling you; you’re not even present most of the time.

You like to pretend it’s because Eve is sleeping in the next room.

“What are you writing?” you ask, and Christ, Arthur, when did you get so terrible at talking to your own wife? You smile but it’s all teeth and no joy, and you want to punch something, preferably yourself. You wonder if it will make you feel alive again.

“Eve would be four weeks old today,” she says, as if she’s completely over the death of her daughter, your daughter. You wonder if the complications at birth would mean Merlin couldn’t have another, and then you mentally slap yourself for it. “Apparently, this week she would be beginning to coo. That’s what I’m writing.”

You leave the room without another word.

Merlin doesn’t follow.

*

“Arthur.”

You snap your head up to meet your father’s reproachful stare. Had you been asleep? You can’t remember, can’t bring yourself to care, but your father is the CEO and you probably shouldn’t be sleeping on his time. “Yes?”

Your father looks at you in that pitying way you know too well, before putting his hands on your desk and leaning forward. “If you need time off to cope with your loss, you just need to tell me,” he says quietly, because it should remain secret that his only son is beginning to go mad. “When your mother died… it took me a long time to get over it.”

“But you still had me, didn’t you?” you say, and your father’s face twists, confused.

“Yes, but you don’t ha--”

“I’m fine, father,” you interrupt, returning to your work. “Your concern is touching, but the death of my daughter is something I’d rather deal with alone.”

He leaves then, but at the end of the day as you make your way to the lifts, you can hear the hushed whispers, feel the stares burning into your back. They don’t understand, Arthur. They don’t know you, or what you’re going through.

You tell this all to Merlin as soon as you get through the door, your wonderful, brilliant wife who hasn’t left the bedroom in three days. You talk until your mouth runs dry because you haven’t discussed your feelings with her in months, now, time a concept that keeps slipping through your fingers.

She throws her journal at the wall, the worn book thumping to the floor.

“Have you ever asked me how_ I_ feel?” she shouts, your impish wife suddenly a dragon breathing fire down your throat. She stands and, although she’s nearly a foot shorter than you, you step back. _Coward._ “How I feel about Eve? She’s _dead_, Arthur. All I have is you, and you’re never here. I need you, _you_, not the journal or the money or anything else. I need you to tell me it will be okay.”

“It’ll be okay, alright?” you shout back, but the words taste wrong in your mouth. It’s all wrong, wrong, wrong, and you don’t know how to make it right.

“Promise me,” Merlin whispers.

You can only give.

“I promise!” you say, too loudly, too quickly. She sits you down on your bed, the bed it all began in, and you look into her eyes, the eyes you fell in love with nine years ago.

Ten. Ten years ago.

Today is your anniversary.

_Buzz._

“I’ll get it,” you say, and Merlin falls silent, following you towards the front door. There stands your neighbour, Robert Jones, a good man if a little bit nosy.

“Arthur, it’s good to see you,” Robert says, nodding. “It’s been a while.”

“It has,” you say leadingly, because you don’t particularly care for this conversation. You glance over your shoulder but Merlin has disappeared, into the kitchen perhaps.

“Are you alright?” Robert asks cautiously. “It’s just, well, I heard shouting through the wall. I know you often talk to yourself, which is understandable, but--”

You feel your brow furrow in confusion but you don’t attempt to school your features. “I don’t talk to myself. Merlin will tell you that.” You try to laugh but it dies in your throat. “At least you don’t hear a baby screaming every night.”

Robert ducks his head, shuffling his feet. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he mumbles. “Perhaps you’d like to come round for some tea? You look in need of some company.”

You laugh, now; do you sound a bit manic? “I’m fine. I’ve got Merlin. Merlin!” you call over your shoulder, “come say hello to Robert!”

“Arthur,” Robert says, and why does he look so pale? “Merl… Merlin... I was there when you _buried _her,” he gasps, pleadingly.

“Nonsense,” you say with a smile, and this is it, Arthur, the ground is opening up beneath your feet. “She’s right here, look, here she is.”

Merlin appears at your side, eyes downcast, her body turned away from yours. You reach out to turn her towards you, touching her shoulder but your hand goes right through it, as if it were air. “What…?”

“I’m sorry,” she says, turning towards you finally. She holds Eve in her arms, and she’s so beautiful, they’re both so beautiful. You should’ve told her, back in the hospital room when she was taking her last breath, in her death throes, but you never did.

Eve gurgles, two months old now, and reaches out for your outstretched hand. Her tiny fingers go right through yours.

“Arthur?” Robert asks, but he’s just white noise now. All that matters is Eve’s blue eyes, the exact same shade as her mother’s.

“I didn’t want to let you go,” Merlin says, cooing at Eve and shifting her on her hip. “I wish you could come with me.” She sobs, turning her head up towards you. “I just wanted everything to go on as it did before it all happened. I wouldn’t have minded leaving you, if you’d had Eve. Just like your mother left your father with you, Arthur.”

“No,” you say, but this is it. Merlin’s figure is fading at the edges, and you knew all along, somewhere at the bottom of your grief, your heartbreak. You’re going to cry again, for the second time in a decade, because you can’t be left alone in this world. Ten years. You’re not ready.

You never will be.


End file.
